Hot Dog Safety Update!

The date of my two-day class to become a licensed mobile food vendor approaches. It’s good for the public to know that these folks selling weenies from carts are at least required to become aware of safe food handling practices. There are actually a lot more hoops for a mobile food vendor to jump through than your run-of-the-mill line cook.

From what I hear, the basic refrain of the class—which is perhaps blearily elementary—is “Keep hot foods hot, keep cold foods cold.” That potato salad? Chill it. If it’s prepackaged in a plastic cup and on display, that display should be refrigerated or on ice. The Dean & Deluca where I worked in St. Helena, CA got busted for keeping its pre-made sandwiches at room temperature, so there are folks who enforce this. Of course, it’s more important to keep high-protein food out of the danger zone (between 40 and 140 degrees F, I think), because bacteria especially loves protein. So that tuna salad sandwich that made you sick—it was probably not the mayo, which is fairly acidic and inhospitable to bacteria, that did it. Nope, it was the tuna.

For your edification, here are the USDA’s hot dog handling safety guides. Not much to learn here unless you are a total food-handling ninny.